FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT RAILWORKS - PAGE 2

While SEPTA's Railworks project is scheduled to roll at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, there's still a potential cow on the tracks - the transit agency's unsettled union contracts. SEPTA's 15-member board still has to vote - even schedule a vote - on a new three-year contract with 5,149 workers in its city transit division. They operate the buses, subways, trolleys and elevated trains running in Philadelphia. The old contract ran out March 15, but members of Transport Workers Union Local 234 have stayed on the job under a tentative settlement, approved overwhelmingly last week by the union.

In response to Jim Hunter's letter Aug. 11, I wish to state that SEPTA is one of the most reliable, attractive, secure and cost-efficient transit operations in the United States. And I am not the only one who says so. The management consultant firm of KPMG Peat Marwick concluded in a report last year that SEPTA compares favorably with its peers in most of the public transportation industry's standard measures of efficiency. These measures include operating cost per vehicle hour, operating cost per passenger mile, operating cost per vehicle revenue mile and operating cost per unlinked trip.

SEPTA's $354 million RailWorks project is scheduled to begin during a time when union contracts are expiring and delays on the project could cost the transit authority $100,000 to $150,000 in damages a day. But James W. Palmer, assistant general manager of the rail division, said he remained "cautiously optimistic" about the project's future. The project will shut down service on six regional rail lines from April 5 to Oct. 3, then again from May 2 until Sept. 4, 1993. Alternate routes will be provided during construction.

The federal government has hit a Glenside-based construction company with $77,500 in fines for allegedly exposing its employees to extremely dangerous levels of lead during reconstruction work on railway bridges in Philadelphia. In issuing a "willful" citation, one of its most stringent penalities, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) indicated its belief that Muratone Company Inc. knew or should have known about the hazard, which could cause death or serious injury.

SEPTA's regional rail system is about to undergo what may be a life-or- death operation. Surgery starts at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, when half the rail system shuts down for repairs. The operation is expected to last about six months. This year. Next year, the surgeons go at it again, shutting down the same rail lines for another four months. The prognosis: Only time will tell. For decades, the rail system has been ailing, thanks mostly to neglect by former owners and operators - the Reading and Penn Central railroads, then Conrail.

It's no secret that riders are unhappy with recent cutbacks on SEPTA buses, subways and rail lines. Now it appears they are talking with their feet. Ridership on city bus and subway lines was down 4 percent in October from a year ago, twice the drop expected by SEPTA. On the regional rail lines, trying to recover from a partial shutdown last summer, traffic in October was down 18 percent, also nearly double what SEPTA had predicted. SEPTA officials say it's too early to draw firm conclusions from the numbers, but there's reason to worry: Ridership losses led to a $1 million deficit for October, and there's $2.3 million in red ink for the first four months of its budget year, SEPTA's chief financial official, Feather O. Houstoun, said yesterday.

Some residents living amid the massive reconstruction of SEPTA's commuter lines through North Philadelphia fear that, like the trains zipping through their communities, the reconstruction money train won't make enough stops in their neighborhoods. While SEPTA has made special efforts to ensure that RailWorks, the federally funded multimillion-dollar project started last May, is neighborhood-friendly, some residents are concerned that contractors are not hiring enough people from their North Philadelphia communities.

There should be no second-guessing the approval of SEPTA's new contract with Transit Workers Union Local 234. Simply put: The deal approved by the SEPTA board last week was the better of two bad alternatives. The increased wages and pension benefits, while far from outlandish, will put heavy stress on the deficit-plagued transit agency. But rejecting the contract would almost certainly have led to a strike. And that would have further reduced ridership and been a blow to the city's retail industry and its psyche.

SEPTA FAVORS THE SUBURBANITE Phase One of the RailWorks project has been completed, and things are back to normal. What is normal? For regular ridership of the Broad Street subway, normal is late crowded trains, stopping between stations and sitting with no explanation of delays, no heat on cold days or air conditioning on hot days, few or no police. When RailWorks began, and suburbanites had to use the Broad Street subway, trains were running on time at regular intervals.

It winds through some of the most scenic land in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, this rail track that meanders for 15.2 miles through woodlands, knolls and river banks. SEPTA, which used to run diesel equipment on the tracks, halted service in 1983 because of the cost and difficulty of maintaining the equipment. What to do with the dormant line, which connects Newtown in Bucks County to Fox Chase in Montgomery County, has become a point of conflict between neighboring areas. Montgomery County officials have stated their opposition to reactivating the line, which runs through Lower Moreland, Abington and Bryn Athyn.